Re: Random IDS Thoughts [WAS: Re: IDS thoughts]

From: Bill Royds <Bill(at)royds.net>
Date: Thu Jun 12 2003 - 22:29:26 EDT

Microsoft has a program called LogParser that takes IIS and other system logs (Event IIS error NCSA W3C etc.) and converts them to other formats or adds them to a SQL server/Access/ODBC data base. It has a builtin SQL engine to allow one to use a SQL syntax to select which logs to convert, including a number of functions
It is free software but of course only works on Windows.

• Original Message ----- From: "Steven Rudolph" <srudolph@iocenter.net> To: <focus-ids@securityfocus.com> Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 8:43 AM Subject: RE: Random IDS Thoughts [WAS: Re: IDS thoughts]

Mike,
Thank you for sharing this with everyone. You had mentioned that you have home grown your log collection system. If you are using any open source programs to do this, what have your choices been? I am attempting to build what sounds like a similar setup but on a much smaller scale - about 500 servers or so with sustained bandwidth in only the 10Mb range out to the net.

I am still in the development/proof of concept stage and experimenting with different ideas at the moment. I would like to consolidate logs from syslog (using msyslog), Windows (syslogNT), and application logs. I am just starting the hunt for application log -> SQL database import utilities for both Apache, IIS and some others. Could you recommend any programs that are capable of doing this?

Could you point me towards some papers or web sites that overview data mining techniques?
Thanks,

Steve Rudolph, CCSA, CCSE
Internet Operations Center

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Lyman [mailto:mlyman@west-point.org] Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 1:52 PM
To: focus-ids@securityfocus.com
Subject: RE: Random IDS Thoughts [WAS: Re: IDS thoughts]

> Hint: data mining techniques, anyone ? There's a great book
> by J. Mena on
> the topic, which I warmly recommend.

I don't think I've posted here before so to set this up, I've been running and building the IDS systems on a global network for about three to four years. 60,000+ employees and contingent staff, 300,000+ systems on the network and Internet egress and ingress in over two dozen locations around the world. Data overload is an understatement for what we face.

The value of data mining on IDS data was first demonstrated to us by folks in our research group who had wanted to do a project on our IDS pilot data. They showed us stuff we'd have never seen even with today's consoles on the commercial IDS systems we use. Since that time we have more and more mining the data and twisting it this way and that. The single most common skill we put on job requirements is the ability to run SQL queries and that is a high priority on our training schedules.

Through developing differenent views of all the data available to us and constant analysis, we've been able to create reliable alerts with few false positives from our commercial systems. With home grown log collection, we've been able to craft low noise, high signal alerting IDS systems from normal high noise event logging. All of it is finely tuned for our environment instead of generic enviroments that the IDS venders have to try to shoot for. It is no where near pefected yet but it is far more managable that what we used to have even though we now have considerably more data sources.

If you are not looking into data mining techniques, you are missing a great way to use your data and reducing the data overload.

Mike Lyman
CISSP
mlyman@west-point.org
pgp keyid 0xD7BBADAD

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Received on Fri Jun 13 15:02:44 2003